


Mute

by bexacaust



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 20:27:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13372455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bexacaust/pseuds/bexacaust
Summary: He wanted to be angry. He wanted to scowl. He wanted to snarl, to hurt and be hurt, to broadcast his emotions like a radio warning.But.He didn’t want anyone to know who he still was. Who he could not leave behind. Who he didn’t want to leave behind.





	Mute

It was easy to burn away the frustration. It was easy to break it’s stem, to drill its root and pour chemicals in the borehole and let it die slowly. It was easy to smile, to nod, to salute. It was easy to lie.

It was easy to excuse himself to be alone. It was easy to let rumors slide down his spinal struts like cold grease and old oil. It was so easy to wear a new mask now, one shaped like Wing’s smile that spoke with Axe’s voice.

That faked Dai Atlas’s determination.

It was so terribly easy to build a secondary shell, a kind of armor made of words and gestures to show the world he was “changed” and that he was “different now”.

Praise, simple praise, gave him a euphoria he once only knew when boosters were clicked into place. When syk coursed through him like skittering glitchroaches over every fiberoptic nerveline, every flickering synapse a jumping place for those words.

He was good.

He was pure.

He was golden.

But behind his mask, there was a snarl still. His hands still twitched for his weapons, his old weapons. He still looked over a battlefield with a thrill in him that surpassed any other. A lust for victory he could not, WOULD not quell.

A bitterness that made his words acrid and hard to swallow before he could edit them.

Sometimes he took hull duty, rivet duty; something to grime his hands and reroughen the callouses and make him feel open and exposed. So he could stand on the ship and lose his “regal” stance and slouch just a bit. Bolt between his denta and rivet gun in hand as he stared at worlds and planets he once ravaged. Once conquered.

Where he was once feared.

Wing had told him- all is balance.

His spark told him that this, what he was doing? Was not balance.

He knew he would never kill the part of him who was Deadlock. He would never destroy the part of him who was the gutter-running mech. He couldn’t, wouldn’t; refused to.

They were PART of him; his hands and pedes, his fangs and claws. They were his weapons, they were his protection. They were his instinct.

And he could take berthmates to hide from them, but it would only work so long.

And he could sleep away the urges, but soon insomnia rears its helm.

And he could talk to anyone or no one… But the words would go stale and tasteless as they soon turned into lies.

And he will kneel down and replace rivets and hull panels and dream.

Dream of the day he no longer had to muffle his voice with a vocmod. Dream of the day he could display his claws and fangs and dream of the day he could silently run in the dark-

Unchained and unmasked.

The rivet gun shudders in his hands and he dreams of the day he can be Drift again.


End file.
